"Sao Paulo" or "São Paulo"?

Should this be at "Sao Paulo" or "São Paulo"? IMHO, the correct name is "São Paulo", but some people don't know how to type 'ã'. -phma 12:49, 24 Mar 2004 (EST)

The correct name in Portuguese is definitely São Paulo. But I don't know if the tilde is also used in English. Dhum Dhum Akubra 12:56, 24 Mar 2004 (EST)

I'm not sure whether "Sao" or "São" is more common in English. My dictionary shows "Sao" and not "São". Searching on Google, I see that the Associated Press seems to use "Sao", and so does the New York Times. I'm not finding a lot of English sources that use "São". "São" is of course the local spelling, but that's not how our Wikitravel:article naming conventions work. As far as I can tell, this should stay "Sao". --Evan 21:28, 24 Mar 2004 (EST)

On pages that say "Sao", do they write other names that should have accents with them or without them? This should indicate whether they consider the correct name to be "Sao Paulo", or they consider the correct name "São Paulo" and don't know how to type it. -phma 21:49, 24 Mar 2004 (EST)

Following the article naming conventions it should be "Sao Paulo" in English, with "São Paulo" identified as Portuguese. The English language does not use "ã", only "a". I encounter the same sort of problem in Maori, where the "a" is written as "ā" ("a" with a macron) in the maori language to indicate long vowels. Unfortunately, "ā" often does not show correctly on screen and is also sorted incorrectly in a word sort. Provided "São Paulo" redirects to "Sao Paulo", (and it does), there should not be a problem, and search engines will find both versions of the entry. My vote, if there is to be one, is "Sao Paulo". - Huttite 06:17, 25 Mar 2004 (EST)

I believe that according to current practice the article name should be São Paulo with a redirect setup from Sao Paulo. "ã" is a Latin character and thus does not need to be converted to anything else provided a redirect is in place for those of us unable to type "ã". -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:28, 9 February 2010 (EST)

Agreed, but that means that we should move the district articles to São Paolo/xx?, ClausHansen 01:42, 9 February 2010 (EST)

I prefer without the tilde. The tilde is of course from the Portuguese, but the English language doesn't use tildes... ChubbyWimbus 03:26, 9 February 2010 (EST)

Breadcrumbs on the district articles ignore ispartof/isin, and use the base pagename. If district article subpage name does not match exactly the city pagename, then the breadcrumbs fail. So city and district must all have the tilde or none can have it. Redirect does not help. Based on the specific example of this city in Article naming conventions which says this specific city should have tilde, I'm starting to move the district pages and update links. Just done one as example so far:São Paulo/Bixiga vs Sao Paulo/Liberdade. --Bill in STL 15:18, 8 September 2010 (EDT)

Straws

Is: "You're expected to take a straw when you buy a bottle of juice or soda, since the water used to cool the bottles is sometimes not fit for consumption." This Sao Paulo advice, or does it apply to Brazil in general? -- Nils 15:21, 5 Apr 2004 (EDT)

This is Brazil in general. It is best because where they are stored and how they are transfered also is not always the cleanest. But note: if you are at the beach...make sure to blow through the straw first or you may end up with a little sand.

Non-specific links

I removed the following links altogether because they refer to Brazil at large, not to São Paulo itself (in spite of the title of the first one).

gringoes.com is an English language website with many useful pointers to Sao Paulo.

Confirm driving days?

I removed this as it sounds like a wacky law-- this of course in no way suggests that it's not really a law, but I'd like some confirmation:

Unless it is the wrong day of the week: cars whose license plate end in 1 and 2 cannot circulate on Mondays; if it ends on 3 or 4, Tuesday is off; 5 or 6, stay home or take a cab on Wednesdays; 7 or 8, Thursday is the unlucky day; 9 or 0, on Fridays you can walk as a penance.

Not only should these not be moved, the original Sao Paulo article shouldn't have been moved either; see the discussion at the beginning of this talk page. The redirect should go in the reverse direction. With very rare exceptions, on this site, place names with diacriticals should be rendered without the diacriticals as they appear in English. See Wikitravel:Article naming conventions for an explanation. -- Bill-on-the-Hill 14:25, 16 September 2006 (EDT)

Metrô tickets correction

I'm updating information about Metrô tickets: they cost 2,30 now and there are no more 10-trip tickets.

Centro rather than Downtown

I believe the name "Centro" for the central area in Sao Paulo should be kept as it is. In Lisbon for instance, all travel guides such as the Lonely Planet use the name "Baixa" for what is considered the centre of town. And there is the "Historical Centre" as well, never "Downtown", which names no place at all and it's a name with no character. Why change names when all the maps and guides will refer to that area as "Centro"?

This place is not New York, sorry. In the same guidelines, I've seen many a Wiki-editor change the very name of the city to Sao PaOlo. Where is the authenticity of writing a travel guide?

Some may say that there is no borough called "Centro", but in the same sense, there is no borough called "East Side" or "North Side", as for this terminology is a cross-reference to New York. I was quite surprised that there was no district named "Upper East Side" on the article.

Information to be verified or added

The Bertioga entry on the Get Out section didn't mention which state motorway (official name and number, i.e., BR 116) to be taken from Sao Paulo. Could somebody please check this information on a road guide and post it where appropriate?

Too personal

Under EAT section, at the Figueira Rubaiat description:

"Although these are the advertised times my party started dinner at 10 pm and we finally left the restaurant at 3.30am without anyone hurrying us out!"

This is a personal experience and, therefore, doesnt fit inside a serious guide... Is it OK to delet it?

Not only OK, but encouraged! I took care of it. Texugo 05:23, 16 June 2007 (EDT)

Temples/churches

Do we really need all these churches in the See section? Maybe we should just have some highlights or if they are that important, maybe there should be a separate article on churches and temples. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Carsonroen (talk • contribs)

Yeah, that list looks way too comprehensive—looks more like a phone book than a travel guide. If you (or anyone else) know which are actually tourist attractions, please do remove the excess listings. --PeterTalk 20:01, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

Districts

Currently it seems that there are waaay to many districts... The top level ones may be a good breakdown, but then does each one need that much subdivision? Does downtown need to be divided into 5 sub-districts, or can those be combined?

Either way, the only ones that should be listed on the main Sao Paulo page are the top level ones, so if we do decide to keep the sub-districts, they should only be listed on the respective district pages... anyone with the familiarity of Sao Paulo want to clean this up? – cacahuatetalk 15:06, 25 September 2008 (EDT)

All discussions of this city above state that it should be reverted to its original name "Sao Paulo". Perhaps that should be worked out before the districting mess is sorted... ChubbyWimbus 14:01, 26 May 2009 (EDT)

This has still not been solved. We should only have one level of districts, so either the top level or the detailed sub-districts should go. I do not know the city well enough to decide this, thoughts?, ClausHansen 12:44, 24 April 2010 (EDT)

Considering a redistrictification

São Paulo is an enormous city and it's a damn shame that it is still in such a freaking mess. I have come back to it numerous times, and it's such a mess that I don't even know where to start. I am not really that familiar with the city, but my fiancé is from there and we're going to be moving there next March, so I'd like to dig into it.

I believe we should get away from using Expanded Center as one of our districts. It might be in common parlance to describe areas near the historic center, but there is nothing else to tie these areas together in a significant way, and if we're ever going to get a nice set of maps for this city, it doesn't make sense to have a district that takes the shape of a ring around another district.

It has been suggested above that there are too many districts. That may or may not be true-- personally I think a fully developed set of articles on a city the size of New York City will probably have at least this many, but... We are simply not there at this point, and I think it would be best to simplify things into a smaller set of articles first. If at some later point they need to be split into more districts, fine. I think starting from this three-layered approach is backwards.

So... I think we should take a step back and re-do this whole districtification thing from the beginning. Here is what I suggest for a new starting point to move forward: 9 districts, based on a map from SP city hall [1], and changing the names slightly from their literal translation.

I certainly agree that we should move away from the three layered approach. Could any of the districts be given a more interesting name than just the direction?, --ClausHansen 02:23, 12 August 2011 (EDT)

I am not aware of any good, useful names as such, without taking the "This, that, that, and the other" naming approach that we already have some of in the current configuration, and even when you do that, you aren't giving a complete list of the neighborhoods covered in the area unless you list 5-7 barrios names in the article title. Bairros are too small to be useful at this juncture, and subprefectures can be misleading because they usually contain a bairro of the same name along with other bairros. I'm open to suggestions at any point along the way, of course, but for a starting point, I can't come up with anything better. I won't take any action on it for about a week because I'm heading over to Hiroshima for a few days.. perhaps someone with better knowledge of the city may come along and suggest something? texugo 05:20, 12 August 2011 (EDT)

I am from Sao Paulo and I lived there almost of my life. I completely agree that the current organization of the pages is a mess, and even worse, demotivates the inhabitants of Sao Paulo (like me) from updating the pages, since they have no idea of which page they should write to. I am fine with texugo's proposed division, as long as a map is shown (so every user knows which page to write). Please also do not call these subdivisions as "districts", because districts have a very specific meaning in Sao Paulo's political division (each subprefecture is divided into districts). Just call them "subdivisions" or "regions". Also, in my opinion, two layers is definetly enough. São Paulo may be as big as New York, but a large portion of the city consists of poor or relatively poor neighborhoods with very little touristic interest. edsonaoki 16:11, 16 November 2011

Hello. Since nobody manifested contrary position, I will start the redistrification. I will keep the old Districts section with a suitable disclaimer message since it will take time to move the old contents of the district sections to the new districts.
edsonaoki 09:55, 12 December 2011

I've reverted some of the recent page moves as the consensus was that São Paulo is the correct article name. Please discuss before changing. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:10, 12 December 2011 (EST)

Ok, Ryan, my bad. I don't clearly see that there is a consensus, but it seems that Wikipedia uses the tilde, so it is reasonable to use here. I will also change the links in the Subdivisions section. edsonaoki 16:48, 12 December 2011

There still seems to be some confusion, but considering the fact that São Paulo is explicitly called out as an example on the Wikitravel:Article naming conventions#Examples section the tilde should be kept unless the policy guidelines are changed. This has been a long-running issue on Wikitravel, so the fact that it's still confusing is probably not surprising :) -- Ryan • (talk) • 14:07, 12 December 2011 (EST)

The Paulista Avenue is not entirely contained in any region, rather it is between the Center and West regions. Given the enormous impotance of the avenue, this suggests to make it and the surroundings a separate section, and let the existance of this section obvious in the beginning of the Center and West sections.

This may create some small redundancy, since if a place is nearby, but not exactly in Paulista Avenue, it may be placed both in the Paulista Avenue section and in the corresponding region. However, it would still be much better than the status quo, where places of and nearby Paulista Avenue are repeated in multiple sections.

Conveniently, there is already a section called "São Paulo/Paulista", which is referred in the "Districts" section as "Paulista and Jardins" (but in practice includes Paulista Avenue and all surrounding districts, like Bela Vista and Consolação).

I would like to propose a few changes on texugo's division. I believe the Northwest and Far East regions do not have enough attractions to make them separate sections. They could be respectively integrated into the Northeast and East sections. Actually the South does not have many attractions either, but since its three neighbor regions have too many attractions already, for me it is okay to have the South as a separate section. What do you think? edsonaoki 07:02, 27 December 2011

Sorry, I have been rather absent with an international move and other travel (will be finishing with the move to São Paulo in a few more weeks). Anyway, I like the direction you are taking it so far. Thanks for your work on this, and please keep it up. I will try to start getting a little more involved. Speaking of which...please see my post below about the maps. texugo 17:56, 23 January 2012 (EST)

On second look, I disagree with making a separate article for Av. Paulista. It doesn't make any more sense as a unified district on a map than the donut-shaped "expanded center" district we had before. Av. Paulista is a big high street, but it's still a street, and we don't do street articles unless the street truly represents its own unified district (re:Bangkok/Sukhumvit). I am not convinced that is the case here. I think we would just end up with a stripe across the map. texugo 18:13, 23 January 2012 (EST)

The problem is that although Av. Paulista isn't a well-defined political area, the avenue and its surroundings is an attraction by itself, probably the first or second more important attraction of the city, as you can easily attest by seeing the amount of people and police in the street. Many people (Paulistanos and tourists alike) end up in restaurants in Alameda Santos just because they happen to be visiting Av. Paulista, not Jardim Paulista or Vila Mariana. This is also reflected in the mind of Paulistanos, that for instance, would consider Shopping Pátio Paulista to be part of the "Paulista region" and not of the appropriate district (the fact that I lived almost all my life in São Paulo and I don't know which district Shopping Pátio Paulista belongs just emphasizes that). Here are the options, with their advantages and disadvantages:

Keep "Paulista region" as a separate section, with a clear and easy-to-follow description of the region's limits (for instance, up to 4 blocks from Av. Paulista in transversal direction, as it currently is);

Split Av. Paulista into its three composing regions. This keeps full consistency with the city's political division, but a visitor that goes to Av. Paulista has to refer to three different sections. As an analogy, it is like splitting Musée du Louvre in Paris in three different sections.

Make a new section containing the four districts that contain Av. Paulista: Jardim Paulista, Consolação, Bela Vista and Vila Mariana. This is a "compromise solution" between the purely administrative and the purely subjective divisions. The problem is that with that division, the South Central regions loses Vila Mariana, one of its most important districts in terms of attractions. edsonaoki 11:12, 24 January 2012.

Changing the topic a bit, I changed my point of view and I think it is okay to have the Northeast and the Northwest as separate sections. The Northwest doesn't have many attractions, but the Northeast has more than enough, and the regions are so different that it doesn't make really sense to have them together. I am still strongly in favor of merging East 1 and East 2 sections, however. Maybe it is also a good idea to call the East 1+East 2 as "Far East", and the South as "Far South", to conform to the way that Paulistanos refer to these areas. edsonaoki 11:33, 24 January 2012 (edited on 18:24, 24 January 2012).

That would be fine with me. I certainly don't like having "numbered" districts, and I'd like to make is conform as much as possible with how the locals refer to it.

However, I am still going to very much favor handling the three sections of Av. Paulista in the three respective district articles from the breakdown that we've been deciding upon above, unless you can show me on a map that it will not just be a random stripe that cuts other districts in half. Other cities also have famous streets that cross district boundaries and get referred to locally as if it were its own district, but we don't usually use them as districts because they cause overlap by bisecting other districts, and we don't want city districts on our map that have non-contiguous segments. Additionally, it doesn't matter whether locals know which neighborhood a mall is in or whatever, because the listings are all going to have the bairro listed. I think it would be strange and possibly confusing to have one Vila Mariana address listed in an Av. Paulista article, and another Vila Mariana address a block or two down listed in the South Central article.texugo 14:15, 24 January 2012 (EST)

Living Costs.

Did a minor edit of the article, since, as of 2011[2] surveys, São Paulo is the most expensive city in the Americas. 189.25.128.157 10:11, 13 August 2011 (EDT)

Isn't it just the highest cost of living for expats? --PeterTalk 15:01, 13 August 2011 (EDT)

Theatres: Does it make sense to list (all of) them?

São Paulo has many dozens of theatres and I, as Paulistano and fan of Theatre, am proud of it. But Paulistanos (like everyone else I think), decide to go to a theatre by the performance being carried and not by the theatre itself, and performances are of course seasonal. Therefore I don't see the need to have an exhaustive list of theatres, as it has been done in some districts. Nobody is going to individually call all of them and ask what they are showing, as websites with theatre guides can be easily found in the internet. Some people gave themselves the trouble of writing the performance being carried when they wrote the entry on Wikitravel, and needless to say, this information is completely out-of-date by now.

Personally, I think we can keep in the list the Theatres that deserve attention for something other than the performances, or that have some unusual performances... definely Theatro Municipal, Sala São Paulo and Teatro Abril fall into this category. But I don't think someone would ever go to Teatro Folha or Teatro FAAP unless they are interested in the particular performance.

I will agree with you for now, with the caveat that you keep the full lists on the respective talk pages. I want to see how much information we are talking about before forming a final opinion. texugo 17:56, 23 January 2012 (EST)

Restaurant prices range

I propose changing the price range of restaurants in São Paulo, from 50/100 (Budget max/Mid-range max) to 25/75.

The are two reasons to do that: first, the 50/100 range seems to be already completely ignored in the District listings, with the 25/75 range more close to what is actually used. Second, 50/100 may make sense in ultra-expensive areas like Jardim Paulista, but not in average of the city: even middle-class Paulistanos get at most $20 per day in lunch tickets, and would never consider going to a R$ 50 restaurant on a daily basis.

Makes sense to me. If it's only one or two districts where the prices routinely trend higher, then it's easy enough to explain that in the articles for those districts alone. -- D. Guillaime 22:54, 6 January 2012 (EST)

Maps

I am going to remove the 2 maps and nominate them for deletion because they are taken from their respective source websites without any apparent permission given. We do need two such maps, but I believe we will have to create them ourselves. If we are to accept User:edsonaoki's suggestion to combine some of my proposed districts above, we would have to do that anyway. texugo 17:56, 23 January 2012 (EST)

Hi texugo, the map that I put there was temporary, I was working on a new map but I was waiting more feedback about the redistrification. The map I am doing is quite simple, so feel free to make a Wikitravel-style map. I can use my map as a temporary placeholder until we finally decide about redistrification. User:edsonaoki 10:31, 24 January 2012.